The Russia Reagan Created

 The fall of the Soviet Union was highlighted in this country by the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
However, so many diplomats, statesmen, professors and journalists warned of the certainty of consequences like the ones we endure in  present day Somalia, and with Al Queda.
We were also warned that Star Wars would destabilize the Soviet countries in such a way that they
would forever be subject to prisoner-of-war treatment by Russia and pro-Soviet forces.
Reagan refused to listen. As predicted, leaders of the collapsing Soviet Union who stopped getting paid by a bankrupt treasury, sold everything they could get their hands on,
 to any group which could pay them. They didn't make political distinctions about possibly outfitting future terrorists. We were told that they wouldn't.
It took mammoth efforts and a tremendous fortune to track down the nuclear
materials which of course were still never all completely gathered or neutralized.
We got so many bad deals from the Reagan years. Present day Crimea and Ukraine are only the latest.
There was Georgia, Chechnya, and there will be more.
Many of us could care less about the former Soviet countries. We don't have to care. But Europe has
refused fracking. So when our aquifers are all oily enough for us have the energy we want
at cheap prices, Europe may trump us and the former Soviets to boot by selling us the fresh water
we need. Oil prices are way more stable when Russia and the Ukraine can agree on borders and
mutual autonomies. We need those prices stable, because we have begun to prize the greasy over
the universal solvent.
Humans can live much longer without food than they can without water.
And places like West Virginia already endure way more natural abortion and birth defect rates
than the country at large because of the non-quality of their water.
Maybe Right To Life should get on that band wagon.
Europe, America, and Japan all have aged populations. If we want to survive as the most powerful
economy in the world, we have to adjust to righting so many of the disgusting trends we embraced in the retarded Reagan presidency. Aids, for instance, put the last bit of dirt over the coffins of an
ailing health care industry, and closed so very many emergency rooms, mainly in heartland America.
Republicans went right along with those eighties policies whole-heartedly. Now we are paying
the price so much so that we have no choice but to overhaul our entire health care system.
The only truly fine-toothed comb medical centers came to be at university hospitals; and that has
put so very much pressure on university systems that many more middle-classed students are priced
out an education than has been true since WWII.
At the time, I'm sure America loved all these truly awful policies because Reagan's was a backlash presidency. But we have been
paying for these backward thinking excitements for so long now, we're hemorrhaging resources.
We are a country with miles of arable land we need to protect and to keep viable. The world is way
too interconnected now for us to think Putin's antics won't affect us.
As a matter of fact, I believe I'm feeling more of a pinch at the pump right now, like prices seemed
to be higher yesterday than they were last week. I can't see this as part of a good summer, at a time
when food prices are going up because we have emergency disaster drought conditions in California.
Besides, we can expect food prices in the fertile west Ukraine to go up now since they will need
the money, which means everything in Europe, in our trading partner countries will go up soon as well.
It's a good thing we are positioned to expand trade in the Pacific Rim now. We have to educate our
manufacturing sector to perform more technologically sophisticated tasks as we relinquish some 20th
century skill level work to other nations. If we don't do this, especially when Russia seems to be co-opting all the countries once again who would like to be partners with countries we trade with already, China will move into that space because they are looking to do the same thing we're attempting: upgrade manufacturing centers to more technologically sophisticated wonders.
As we keep down oil prices, we need to keep down food prices as well. That means Republicans
are finally right if they will do what John Boehner says they will: cooperate with President Obama
in helping Russia to see it has to compete, not annex.
We have enough fresh water to keep our crops safe at this moment, but not if we threaten our water to keep energy prices down. Since it's hard enough to convince the oil and gas industry this is true as it
is, this year is a bad, bad time for crises to threaten oil prices here.
We have every reason to want to keep Russia and the Ukraine from stand-offs. Germany has a great
vested interest in this as well.
Why care about Germany?
Well, Germany is dependent on oil stability in that region as well land Germany and Duetchbank are the principal entities keeping Europe from deeper recession. We do need some healthy economies in our trading partners, after all, and we need NATO.
If Europe slips more quickly into recession at this time, how do we get paid?
I hope President Obama will do all he can do diplomatically, to calm the Russian aggression
without making Moscow feel too desperate.